The Bupa Health and Wellbeing Award: GSK

Award Type:

Finalist for Business in the Community's Bupa Health and Wellbeing Award 2019.

GSK: Focusing on healthy eating and mental health to help staff

17,000 UK staff

160 employees in UK volunteer as health and wellbeing champions

As a science-led global healthcare company, GSK’s purpose is to help people, all around the world, to do more, feel better, live longer. This purpose starts with its employees.

The GSK Health & Wellbeing Programme aims to help the company’s 95,000 employees, including 17,000 working across the UK, to proactively manage their energy levels and adopt healthy behaviours. It does this by fostering a culture that prioritises health and wellbeing, complemented by a range of programmes, policies and benefits. These are focused in five areas: physical activity, healthy eating, energy and resilience, living smoke-free and access to preventative healthcare, including immunisations and cancer screenings. There is also a big emphasis on mental health awareness and encouraging more open conversation about mental health.

An online portal gives employees access to the breadth of services they can draw on in support of their emotional, physical and financial wellbeing. These include occupational health services, 24-hour confidential counselling, energy and resilience programmes, health and wellbeing webinars, mindfulness training, in-house coaching, and treatment for physical and mental health challenges through the company healthcare plan.

Health and wellbeing is visibly championed as a GSK priority by CEO Emma Walmsley and her leadership team. They have made it a focus area for line managers across the company, introducing a new tool that supports teams to more regularly share upwards feedback on their experiences, and ensuring managers have access to capability building resources, including formal courses and one-to-one coaching. Alongside this leadership effort, 160 GSK employees across the UK volunteer as health and wellbeing champions in their workplaces, actively driving health awareness and behaviour change among their colleagues.